This site is dedicated to the memory of Dr. Alan William Smolowe who gave birth to the creation of this database.
If the doors of perception were cleansed, every thing would appear to man as it is, infinite.
Character | Man | Perception |
Boethius, fully Anicius Manlius Severinus Boethius NULL
It is one thing to be carried through an endless life, another thing to embrace the whole presence of an endless life together, which is manifestly proper to the divine Mind. The temporal world seems to emulate in part that which it cannot fully obtain or express, tying itself to whatever presence there is in this exiguous and fleeting moment - a presence which, since it carries a certain image of that abiding Presence, gives to whatever may partake of it the quality of seeming to have being. But because it could not stay, it undertook an infinite journey of time; and so it came to pass that, by going, it continued that life, whose plenitude it could not comprehend by staying.
Heywood Broun, fully Matthew Heywood Campbell Broun
The ability to make love frivolously is the thing which distinguishes human beings from the beasts.
He who can wait for what he desires takes the course not to be exceedingly grieved if he fails of it; he, on the contrary, who labors after a thing too impatiently thinks the success when it comes is not a recompense equal to all the pains he has been at about it.
Character | Recompense | Success |
Discretion is the perfection of reason, and a guide to us in all the duties of life; cunning is a kind of instinct, that only looks after our immediate interests and welfare. Discretion is only found in men of strong sense and good understanding; cunning is often to be met with in brutes themselves, and in persons who are but the fewest removes from them.
Character | Cunning | Discretion | Good | Instinct | Life | Life | Looks | Men | Perfection | Reason | Sense | Understanding |
To love to preach is one thing - to love those to whom we preach, quite another.
Hypocrisy is folly. It is much easier, safer, and pleasanter to be the thing which a man aims to appear, than to keep up the appearance of what he is not.
Stuart Cloete, fully Edward Fairly Stuart Graham
Happiness is a hard thing because it is achieved only by making others happy.
Mutability is the a badge of infirmity. It is seldom that a man continues to wish and design the same thing two days alike.
Character | Design | Man | Mutability |
The nobles charities, the best fruits of learning, the richest discoveries, the best institutions of law and justice, every greatest thing the world has seen, represents, more or less directly, the fruitfulness and creativeness of religion.
Miguel de Cervantes, fully Miguel de Cervantes Saaversa
Strive to know thyself, the most difficult thing to know that can be imagined.
Humility is not a weak and timid quality; it must be carefully distinguished from a groveling spirit. There is such a thing as an honest pride and self-respect. Though we may be servants of all, we should be servile to none.
Chazon Ish, named Rabbi Avraham Yeshayahu Karelitz
All beginnings are difficult, but there is nothing that stands in the way when you have a strong will to accomplish. The essential thing is to be sincerely resolved to be successful.
G. K. Chesterton, fully Gilbert Keith Chesterton
There is no such thing on earth as an uninteresting subject; the only thing that can exist is an uninterested person.
We always live at the time we live and not at some other time, and only by extracting at each present time the full meaning of each present experience are we prepared for doing the same thing in the future. This is the only preparation which in the long run amounts to anything.
Character | Experience | Future | Meaning | Present | Time |